George Floyd to Be Honored by Minneapolis, Houston High Schools at Basketball Game

Minneapolis North High School and Jack Yates Senior High School plan to honor George Floyd with the inaugural George Floyd Jr. Memorial Holiday Classic on Tuesday night.

ESPN's Myron Medcalf noted Minneapolis North is located six miles from where Floyd was murdered by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Yates is also where Floyd attended high school, playing on the basketball and football teams.

Minneapolis North head coach Larry McKenzie told Medcalf the event should help ensure Floyd isn't forgotten:

"Bringing [Floyd's] high school is a great way of paying tribute to him in this first annual event. We tend to have short memories of these kinds of incidents and fail to keep them at the forefront of discussions, then before we know it, it's all happening again. Without a doubt, we want to keep this on people's minds: what took place in Minneapolis with George Floyd."

Yates head coach Eddy Barlow was friends with Floyd as well, so Tuesday's matchup has a personal connection.

Floyd's murder in May 2020 galvanized the United States after a video showed Chauvin kneeling on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds during the course of an arrest. Floyd was transported to a local hospital and pronounced dead.

In April, Chauvin was found guilty on charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to 22-and-a-half years in prison in June.

The killings of multiple Black people, including Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, sparked nationwide protests across the summer of 2020 and led to calls for concrete solutions to police brutality and systemic racism.